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Michigan-based Sintercore LLC have developed a range of muzzle brakes that are billed as the first commercial 3D printed firearm parts. Called Auxetik (pronounced Aug-ZETIK), the firearm parts were created using Direct Metal Laser Sintering, an additive metal fabrication technology that fuses metal powder into a solid part by melting it locally using the focused laser beam. Layer by layer parts are built up additively. This process allows for both complex internal features and unconventional external forms. Continue reading →

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You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came.

This fallacy avoids the argument by shifting focus onto something’s or someone’s origins. It’s similar to an ad hominem fallacy in that it leverages existing negative perceptions to make someone’s argument look bad, without actually presenting a case for why the argument itself lacks merit. Continue reading →

For some reason, I have been flashing back to those early morning conversations you have in college. One that keeps percolating to the top is the old question of “Is man born naturally good or naturally evil?”

Man is naturally good

Most of my friends, all humanists and most atheists would answer, “Man is born good….” The answer to “how does he become evil” varies, but the one I heard most often is, “We learn to be evil from society.”

This is the ancient tabula rasa (“blank slate”) argument is reused. The earliest version of this that we have is from Aristotle, and it has been revised and revisited over the ages. Each person is born clean, pure and untarnished, but the evil and corruption of society tarnishes and destroys that original purity.

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You made what could be called an appeal to purity as a way to dismiss relevant criticisms or flaws of your argument.

In this form of faulty reasoning one’s belief is rendered unfalsifiable because no matter how compelling the evidence is, one simply shifts the goalposts so that it wouldn’t apply to a supposedly ‘true’ example. This kind of post-rationalization is a way of avoiding valid criticisms of one’s argument. Continue reading →

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http://bible.us/59/1KI18.21.ESV And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.
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But before you cheer that Obamacare will die of its own weight, look hard at the other side. The government needs everyone in the system, especially the relatively healthy and solvent customers of this hospital. It also needs hospitals and doctors to take medicare patients. The emergence of a two-track system is a financial and political disaster. So, how long can it last before the government bans it? Other countries have banned private practice to support their government health systems. Ours will likely go down fighting, and this is the obvious move. In addition, the hospitals that don’t want to compete have strong political power to shut this down, and will make the same cherry-picking complaints that airlines and phone companies used to keep their protections in place. It will not survive easily.

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You assumed that one part of something has to be applied to all, or other, parts of it; or that the whole must apply to its parts.

Often when something is true for the part it does also apply to the whole, or vice versa, but the crucial difference is whether there exists good evidence to show that this is the case. Because we observe consistencies in things, our thinking can become biased so that we presume consistency to exist where it does not.

Example: Daniel was a precocious child and had a liking for logic. He reasoned that atoms are invisible, and that he was made of atoms and therefore invisible too. Unfortunately, despite his thinky skills, he lost the game of hide and go seek.

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I got a chance to shoot the images that Google turned into this animated loop… so I took it. I thought it would be fun. I was not disappointed. I’m sorry, but you will have to click the image to see the animated loop.

“All I know is that for me, Scott Bourne, switching to CC cost me a bunch of money.”

I have been looking forward to Mr. Bourne’s report on his licensing experiment. I knew that his retirement from active assignment shooting would have a large impact, and separating the retirement influence from the licensing influence is difficult, but his results are important.

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Rather than dismiss youthful innocence and joy as immature emotions to be cast off on the road to adulthood, Lewis treasured (as did Jesus!) that child-like view of the world that opens itself to faith and hope and that can discern magic and wonder in even the most mundane of things.

Lewis found nothing wise or mature or even realistic in the cynicism and skepticism of his academic colleagues. Indeed, because he was not too proud to look for them there, Lewis discovered great insights in Aesop’s Fables, The Wind in the Willows, The Tales of Beatrix Potter, Alice in Wonderland, and the children’s stories of George MacDonald and E. Nesbitt.

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You said that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true.

It’s important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.

Example: Not able to defend his position that evolution ‘isn’t true’ Bob says that he knows a scientist who also questions evolution (and presumably isn’t a primate).

You really would have a difficult time grasping how hard this is for me to wrap my mind around. Charles Krauthammer says a lot of things from his bully pulpit at the Washington Post, but it really never makes sense. For him to write a whole editorial that is pinned so fiercely to reality is mind boggling. This is the economists to gladly ignores all of reality to beat the drum of Keynesian enconomics and wishful socialism.

The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions — more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.

And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because — surprise! — we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind. Continue reading →

Epistemology — the study of what we can know — turned out to be particularly useful, since people love to tell reporters what they believe as if it’s a fact. Well, to be fair, they often don’t know the difference between their beliefs and facts. They think the mere fact that they believe something is true — for example, that angels watch over us — makes it true. While it’s true that they’re not lying, exactly, sorting out meaningful information from the mis- and dis- versions used to be the job of ink-stained wretches. Nowadays most of us produce advertiser-driven content, of course, but still I find the discipline inherent in epistemology useful when dealing with car sellers, alternative health practitioners, and marketers of all sorts.